Conflicting advice on Sri Lanka safety

A new wave of violence that threatens to destroy the island’s struggling tourist industry

Sri Lanka's fragile peace was shattered last week by a new wave of violence that threatens to destroy the island's struggling tourist industry. A week after the Sri Lankan government ended the five-year-old ceasefire, Tamil Tiger rebels bombed a bus in the town of Okkampitiya, 150 miles east of Colombo, leaving 38 dead and wounding scores more.

As Amnesty International warned of "a dramatic rise in indiscriminate attacks against the civilian population", the ferocity of the attack and, crucially, its location in the tourist heartland of the south, has led the German government to issue a travel advisory warning, and some German tour operators to suspend departures to the island.

Here, the Foreign Office (FO) has stopped short of issuing similar advice, maintaining instead its long-standing warning against travel to the north and east of the island. "Our position is that British nationals are most at risk in those parts